So...since you "haven't had time to update", what have you been doing?

Well somehow Spain has changed me and made me actually want to do things and meet new people and spend time with my friends. So in December not only was I very busy with school, I was really busy with running and hanging out with people (my Spanish friends and AFSers).

Speaking of school, the first trimester is over! I got my grades on the 17th, I think, and passed all my classes except for Lengua, but there's a re-test sometime in January so I might still be able to pull my grade up.

(4 and below is failing, 5 and above passing. People are perfectly content with just a 5, 6 and 7 are reasonable, 8,9 and 10 VERY good.)

Another random thing about school is that in March I will be going to London with a bunch of kids from Primero Bachillerato! It's supposed to be like an "English Immersion" ahaha... I'm super excited!

grades

Annnd speaking of running, as of the other day I have officially run 1,000 miles this year! A big leap forward from the accumulative 300 I had last year. On the 31st my host mom, uncle and I are going to run the San Silvestre in Burgos but I'll talk more about that later.

So, things I have been doing...I guess about 2 weeks ago, now, I went to the Hobbit with a bunch of AFS friends! We went to a theater in the center of Madrid that had it playing in English with Spanish subtitles. It was so fun. Beforehand, I went to a Mexican Restaurant that I found by accident with my friend Sofia and it was quite shocking to have spicy food again! I was a little disappointed by the Hobbit but at the same time...I can't help but have loved it. It's probably one of my favorite books of all time, and being able to be transported into that world like that is the best.

Mexican food!

awkward photo of me with my Hobbit ticket and POPCORN

The Friday before we all saw the Hobbit I went to El Prado with Ilhan and Boom and we saw the Goya exhibit which I swear contains the most haunting paintings I have ever seen in my life. I am completely enamored with the way Goya can paint the darkest side of humanity, the terror, the brutality. El Prado, in general, is such an amazing collection of work, and I've barely seen a part of it.

At some point I also went to a friend's house for lunch after school and then we watched Castle in Spanish (an old episode, sadly) and went looking for a dress for me for Nochevieja (New Years Eve). It really amazes me sometimes how I can have full conversations in Spanish now (even though my Spanish is FAR from perfect). We didn't find a dress (I still haven't...) but it was a lot of fun.

A few weekends ago there was an AFS potluck for Navidad, where everyone had to bring something from their own country. I made sugarcookies with my mom and brother (: I love all of the AFSers in Madrid so much, they are a fantastic group, and it's amazing to watch everybody be able to speak in Spanish after not even four months!

Although...the four month mark IS coming up. I can't really believe it's been that long!

Colmenar Viejo

Now that it's Christmas Break I finally have to time to write a bunch of posts about what I've been up to! Sorry for not having been very consistent with keeping you all informed on my life here.

I guess first off I need to talk about the family I've been living with for the past month now! As most of you know, I had to change families a few days after my birthday in November because my host-grandmother in my last family needed an intense surgery and my family needed to be there to care for her. My family of now lives in a large village north of the city of Madrid and includes my host dad, Festus, my host mom Maite and my 2 and a half year old host brother Daniel. They are all wonderful and I'm am very happy with them. Currently, for the holidays, we are staying at Maite's parents' apartment in Burgos with her two siblings as well. Burgos is about 3 hours north of Madrid, in the province of Castilla y Leon, but I'll talk more about that later. Both my host parents and my host brother speak fluent english but we still talk in spanish most of the time.

I am still going to the same school in Alcorcon, for several reasons. I have friends there, and the teachers know and like me. Also, the isn't another school closer to Colmenar that has the same Arts Course that I'm in. This means that I have to get up at 6:30 every day to catch the train at 7:16 to arrive at my station in Alcorcon at 8:20 and walk to school to be there in time for school to start at 8:30. In the mornings my host dad drives me to the train station and in the afternoons I either take a bus or walk home, usually not getting home till just before 4. I usually study or draw on the train, so the commute isn't really that bad, and I'm really grateful that I can continue going to the same school. In fact, in March I'm going on a school trip to London!

Colmenar Viejo is nice, much more "countryside" than Alcorcon, but it's smaller so that does mean that there's a little less to do, but my host mom has been looking into a lot of activities for me so that I can make friends there. One thing I've noticed is there are quite a few hard core runners and bikers, and I've found several nice places to run, including a really nice (and challenging) 6-8 mile trail.

a trail

Colmenar Viejo (picture not by me)

my new room

Birthday and Thanksgiving

I know, I know, this post is almost 3 weeks late, but here I am (finally) to tell you about my birthday and thanksgiving. For those of you who didn't know, my birthday is always around (sometimes even on) Thanksgiving. Obviously, Thanksgiving isn't celebrated in Spain, so here I didn't have to worry about the two colliding. What I did worry about a little was the fact that I would be changing families just a few days after (see previous post). However, I ended up having an awesome birthday and birthday week!

In fact, the Saturday before a bunch of us AFSers got together and made our own Thanksgiving! Everyone brought food, and those not from the U.S. brought dishes more typical of their country. It was tons of fun, and the food was great. Cameron got stuck in the bathroom, and we ended up watching Mean Girls and sharing music. Afterwards, some of went to Sol because it was Ruby's last weekend in Spain! She's from Belgium, and chose to come to Spain for only a trimester. I hung out with Ruby, Ilhan and Ilhan's friend Adrian until 1 in the morning when I had to catch the metro home. We had a great time, and I miss Ruby so much now.

The next day my host family celebrated my birthday (it was on a Monday this year, and we were all going to busy). It was so wonderful, we skyped with my real family and Blake and both of my families sang me happy birthday! I don't think I've ever been happier.

going to celebrate Thanksgiving!

Ani with my birthday cake: a traditional Roscon de Reyes, usually eaten for Christmas or Three Kings Day

Both families!

Tuesday, the day after my birthday, was really fun as well. I went ice skating with my school for a field trip! I am so fond of my class, they are all so great. I also talked quite a bit with Cameron, a guy from Canada who is helping to teach English here. He told me it's true that most Canadians ice skate and know how to ski.

I think this is pretty much my entire class (:

 In addition, on Monday Melisande and I went into Madrid and I got my nose pierced, and she got her tragus pierced!

So that was my birthday and thanksgiving. I can't really believe I'm 16...In the U.S. that's a pretty big deal, with being able to drive and such. Here you can't drive until your 18, and that's the drinking age as well, so 16 isn't considered as important. Nevertheless, my friends and family made me feel very loved and celebrated.

And thank you everyone for the birthday cards! It's so fun receiving mail here in Spain. I have a whole bunch of postcards I've been meaning to send for over a month, I just have been to lazy to go buy stamps!

Happy Holidays! I'll do another post this week about my new family, don't worry.

El Cambio

El Cambio. The change. "Cambiar", or "to change" is one of the first verbs I remember learning when I first arrived in Spain, nearly 3 months ago.

I've been avoiding writing this blog post for a week or two now. The fact is, tomorrow I will be leaving my current host family - where I will be living, I still don't know. I do not want anyone to get the idea that my host family and I do not get along or were having problems, because honestly we are a pretty perfect match. They were even planning on hosting me the entire year, rather than just half (which they put on the application because they had very understandable concerns about how difficult it could be to have a host student). The problem is that my host grandmother - my mother's mother - will be undergoing brain surgery next week, and my mother will need to live with her for awhile to care for her. This, along with the general stress this puts on my family, is why I am changing.

I am sad that I will be changing families, because as stated above, I could not have been placed with a better family for the person I am, and they are just honestly some of the sweetest and most understanding people I know. It's also sad that there is a possibility that I will need to change schools, because I really enjoy my school and my classes and have made a lot of really great friends. I want to be able to tell you all that I could be placed with a host family here in Alcorcon or close by, but I honestly have no idea what is going on right now. All I know is that I am somehow going to be able to finish the trimester at my current school - this I have been promised.

As those exchange students who have had to change families know, it is not a prospect one can look forward to with ease. Upon arriving in your host country, your host family becomes the first place that you begin to feel secure in, a little area of sanctity in an otherwise unknown universe. The idea of having to "start all over" in sense is very difficult to come to terms with.

But here is what I'm trying to say in a nutshell: change is hard. You don't always expect it. Often, you can't do anything about it.

Yet at the same time you have to try and remain positive. I have been looking back on all the amazing changes that have happened since I've arrived in Spain: I now am pretty much conversational in Spanish. I have had my eyes opened on what it means to be fully responsible for yourself. I have turned 16. Made friends. Stepped outside my comfort zone.

With changing families I will have the opportunity to meet many more people and become part of their lives as well, and this I do look forward to. I have fear, yes, but also hope and excitement because I refuse to let this make my exchange experience any less. Change is inevitable; sometimes it is big and all encompassing, and sometimes it is small and slow. But how we react to changes is what determines whether they are for the better or worse.

(This post is a little heavy. Expect a more light-hearted update about birthday and thanksgiving and school soon.)

10 weeks (aka: I couldn't think of a more exciting title)

Well, as the title of this post states, it's pretty much been 10 weeks since I left Flagstaff. 2 and a half months. I'm not really sure what to think about that amount of time.

I apologize for not updating more often. Last week I really got hit hard with homework, and I'm finally starting to get invited to do things with friends more, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I'll talk about in this post. Honestly, the reason I'm writing this right now is because I don't want to do filosofia homework...I'll put headings every few paragraphs so y'all can just read the parts you're interested in.


Halloween
I guess I'll start with Halloween. Halloween was a lot of fun for me, because it was pretty popular at my school. Not many adults really care about it, and I guess not a lot of kids, but some of the young ones will go "truko  o trato"  (trick or treating) throughout the apartment building. But because my friends (and class in general) is awesome, quite a few kids (yes, including me) dressed up for school. That night, my friend Paula (who lives in the same building as me) invited me to go to her house and watch scary movies and eat snacks with her and some of her family and friends. That ended up being a lot of fun and I didn't go home until midnight (although that's considered a pretty respectable time to go home here).

The next two days we didn't have school because Thursday was All Saints Day and Friday was "la puenta". I'm not exactly sure how to explain this, as it's kind of just how Spanish logic works...but basically if there's a holiday on a Thursday with no school then there isn't school Friday because it's "bridging" (puenta means bridge) the gap between Thursday and Friday.

Friends
Anyways, that Friday some of my friends were throwing a surprise birthday party for our friend Amanda, so we all went to a Creperie and ate crepes and shakes and talked for a few hours. Just so you know, the stereotype that los espanoles are loud is very, very true. Sometimes I get confused for a second before I realize that, just because they're yelling, it doesn't mean they're angry. But back on the subject of Friday, after the creperie we went to meet with some other friends and another girl who I hang out with sometimes at school, Elena, was with them and I ended up hanging out with her and these new friends for a few more hours. I'm really happy that, when I first meet people, they don't realize I'm not Spanish, and when they find out I'm foreign they don't assume I'm from the U.S. at all.

Orientation
Three weeks ago? was the first orientation we had just with the AFSers in our area (Week 6 Orientation or something like that). It was...fun. Yes, mostly fun. What I enjoyed most was watching all of us speak in (albeit broken) Spanish, and be able to understand it (mostly). We've all come so far since arrival!
And to any Madrid Kids reading this...let me see your f*cking chicken :b (I have a feeling we'll never forget this).

School
I really like school for the most part, and I fully understand about 85% of it, and have some vague idea of what's going on for about 10% of the time. The other 5% is spent sleeping... Like I said earlier, in the past two weeks I've been getting a lot more homework. I don't mind too much, as it gives me something to do and is really helping my Spanish. Last week I had an English Test (easy peasy) and a report on Mars due. The way they do reports and projects here is a lot different, for one thing you don't type it all out. You hand-write it all on blank paper. For this reason they generally need to be longer, 4-6 pages. You have to take the projects and exams very seriously because they pretty much determine your grade - for example, my entire 1st trimester Ciencias grade is based on that Mars project (30%) and an upcoming test on everything we've learned so far (70%). So when I say homework, it's more like studying or reading or working on projects because teachers don't actually grade homework and the reason you do it is so you know what's going to be on the test. Kids here have to be a lot more responsible for their grade.

Gym
Starting last month, I joined a gym that's close to our apartment and owned by a friend of my parents. I usually go four or five times a week: 2x a week to kickboxing, 2x a week yoga, and then various other things like strength training (I lift weights...) and sometimes I use the elliptical or treadmill if it's been raining or I didn't have time to run. Speaking of running, I'm now about 120 miles away from having run 1,000 miles this year! Woo. I'm really enjoying my runs here.



That's all I'm going to say in this post, again, I'll try and update more often so they aren't so long and random. And if I'm making grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, that just proves how much Spanish I have in my brain...I can't tell you how many times while writing this I wanted to substitute in Spanish words, or couldn't figure out how to spell something (English spelling is so tricky, gah.) I hope everyone is doing well - yay U.S. for electing Obama! Also, good luck to my amazing sister and all my friends who are doing NaNoWriMo, I really wish I could do it again this year!
Annnd...November's already almost half-over. Que loco. Have a Happy Thanksgiving! (Although I hope to update before then).

“Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.” ― Marc Riboudmy

my Ciencias textbook

bocadilla de Nutella y leche...yuuum

Huelga = strike

Alcorcon

a section of the path I run on several times a week. It got green here rather suddenly after we had a few days of rain.

at the 1930's exhibit at the Reina Sofia

Atocha Train Station, beautiful building

Tiempo y Conecciones

Believe it or not, it has been 5 weeks since I left Flagstaff. It has been difficult for me to get a grasp on time here; does a week really last a week when you feel like it’s barely been a day? I admit there have been times when I’ve wanted nothing more than to take the Metro to the Madrid Airport and stow away on the next flight back to Arizona. But at the same time, when it occurs to me I have 9 more months left (only 9 more months?!) I wonder how I could possibly waste a single moment here not being excited and passionate and bold.

This isn’t to say that every day here needs to be a completely new experience. This weekend I’ve had a pretty bad head cold, and done almost nothing but lay around. But one of the things I am slowly learning here is to find the virtue of every moment, good and bad. To realize that I need quiet, sleepy days just as much as I need the strenuous adventure ones. It’s finding balance, and it’s difficult but worthwhile.

This past week has been the best one I’ve had here so far (other than being sick). When I ask myself why this is, what made it better than the rest, I find it difficult to pinpoint an exact answer. The fact that I am beginning to actually see/hear improvement in my Spanish, that my classmates are becoming more interested and willing to communicate with me, a sudden realization that I have my whole life ahead of me to learn and explore and love– all of these things have given me hope and made me feel better. Underneath it all, though, it is finding connections between cultures and people and places and ideas that have made this week wonderful. Becoming more adjusted to the way things are here has made me realize that, despite the sometimes vast, chasm-like differences in the actions and attitudes here compared to the U.S., beneath every gesture and word it is possible to find a similarity. Over many years, people have developed the need to give labels to everything and everyone; these can vary from “wrong” and “right” to “Spanish” and “American”, “girl” and boy”, “rich” and “poor”, etc. It is absolutely necessary to define things, I know this, but I feel that much of our inability to change the world for the better comes from this inherent belief that what defines us also separates us. We look for the differences first, in order to make comparisons that give us a sense of place and time, and then so often fail or forget to look for similarities - connections.

And yet, there are so many that completely bypass language. Sitting in class on Friday afternoon, I can feel the familiar excitement among my peers for the weekend, and the familiar frustration in the teachers. When we go to check out at the Grocery Store, everybody tries to find the shortest line. When my host brother’s phone was stolen from him last weekend, everybody in the family was startled and a little frightened, because it doesn’t matter if you live in a city or a small town, getting robbed is something that “only ever happens to other people”. There’s always going to be that kid in class who gives the most bullshit answers on purpose. You will find that in the course of your life you will meet people over and over again who have some connection to you and who you are - just this past week I met a Canadian studying abroad here who knew someone at NAU and found out my new yoga teacher studied abroad with AFS as well.

These connections are how the world…works. And I think that’s beautiful.

And whether or not this is because we’ve chosen to make it work this way or it was “meant” to work this way or it only seems to work this way, it makes me realize that we have no reason whatsoever not to explore this world to the best of our ability. This doesn’t mean you have to hop on a plane and fly to Morocco (although, man, that would be so cool), it means that each day we must dare to find those connections, sometimes to make those connections. It's the only way that we are ever going to be able to change anything about ourselves and our lives and our world.

I've probably been listening to my Filosofia teacher too much, with all this abstract talkin'. 

Anyways, I'm doing fine, and I am really happy here.